


Careful What You Wish For

by Mickleditch



Category: Political - Fandom, Political RPF, Political RPF - UK 20th-21st c.
Genre: 2015 UK Election, British Politics, Coalition, Gen, Language, No Dialogue, Politicians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 03:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3921415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mickleditch/pseuds/Mickleditch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Cameron finally has what he's always wanted. Or what he wanted, once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Careful What You Wish For

**Author's Note:**

> Short thing, less than 1000 words, written in a couple of hours today, inspired by musings about exactly how Cameron might be feeling after the election, now he's got his majority. In which I partially defend Nick Clegg, and David Cameron is slightly human. Could be a bit Cameron/Clegg-ish if you wanted it to be.

_Be careful what you wish for_  
_'Cause you just might get it all_  
_You just might get it all_  
_And then some you don't want_

It doesn't fully sink in with David, not at first. 

It isn't until three days later, after the circus has started to calm down, that it hits him. After the victory celebrations - the party ones, and the private ones, later, with Sam - and the press statements. After the start of the donkey work, hashing out the new Cabinet and filling the suddenly, conspicuously empty offices. And when it does, it's so heavy and vast in the dark that he can't shake the thought, any more than he can go back to sleep, even though the clock assures him that it's only two hours into Monday morning. 

He's got what he wanted; what he really wanted the last time round, when they were trying to prise Gordon out of Number Ten, and Nick, the kingmaker, was lapping it up, swanning back and forth between the two of them, the cocky bastard; the whole fucking country hanging on the Lib Dems. _Bastard,_ David used to call him that, to George, all the time. But David had offered the sweeter deal in the end, and Nick had thrown in with them. All the way, not just a confidence and supply, a formal coalition. They'd stood in the garden among the roses like a pair of newlyweds and smiled for the _Times_ and the _Telegraph_ while the Lib Dem MPs foamed at the mouth over how Nick, Chris and Danny had thrown their manifesto to the wind for a snatch at power. _Stupid bastard,_ David had started calling Nick, then, sometimes, for his naiveté, that David had ever intended to let him have any. But he hadn't said it as often as he'd thought he would. Because he was finding out that Nick was neither quite that stupid, nor quite that much of a bastard. 

He's spent five years chewing on Nick, using his ministers and MPs to make up the numbers they needed, and then spat him out. The public turned on the Lib Dems in their droves on Thursday, throwing them out of seat after seat. Danny. Vince. David's never seen Nick looking so broken as he did when they stood side by side for the last time at the Cenotaph. Like a man who's had his soul slowly leeched from him until he's been left empty of everything inside; everything that once mattered. The junior partner in a coalition always comes off worst. They always get screwed over. Everyone knows it, and Nick should have known it. He was too ambitious to see it, and, conversely, too well-meaning.

 _You did this to yourself,_ David had thought, resolutely. But he'd still wanted to reach out to him.

Just as he's always been able to reach out to him.

 _Vote with us on the tuition fees, Nick. Nick, talk to your people about the Lords. Make them see some sense, would you? The House is never going to back reform - that's just the way it is. Tell them to forget about it._ And Nick has been there, his dejection growing with each principle he compromises, seated beside David on the front bench, propping him up. The red lines that David has seen, by the lift of his chin, that Nick's going to refuse to cross - he's used all those too, turning them into Brownie points for the Tories and their coalition partners into the real reason behind their failures. Nick's been his shield, his safety net. And, still, in some perverse way, his friend. He's been closer to Nick than he ever thought that he could be to an albatross around his neck.

When Parliament reconvenes, Nick won't be sitting beside David any more. Won't be sticking his head around his office door, _Got five minutes?_ and wandering in, one hand stuffed in his pocket. He's just one more opposition MP now. A minority party. Irrelevant, at the end of the day. 

Then there's the SNP. David exhales hard through his nose into the darkness, _fuck_ , glancing, before he even finishes doing so, at the long, undulating hump of sleep beside him that is Sam. When they had passed one another in Whitehall, his tall figure almost obscuring Nicola's petite one, David had felt her eyes following him; soft, clever eyes that miss nothing. She might have told the Scots that a vote for the SNP wasn't by default a vote for independence, but he knows that she's going to be like a terrier with a bone until she gets it. She'll never let it lie. He'd like to talk to somebody about her, he thinks. George, maybe. George has always been George, and David loves him for it.

But George, these days, isn't Nick.

For the first time, since he's been Prime Minister, David's on his own. And he isn't as happy about the prospect of that as he was when the exit polls came out, and nowhere near as happy as he knows that he should be.


End file.
